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“The ability to inspire others is grounded in a set of conscious, intentional, and learnable behaviors.”

Some leaders inspire.

Think of Nelson Mandela. He has inspired and mobilized masses, changing South Africa and history. He endured hardship and served as a role model for values such as equality, respect, forgiveness, and justice. Similarly, some leaders transform and build great organizations by role modeling and appealing to people’s values, such as when a leader stirs people’s sense of pride and their united strength as they undertake an ambitious corporate transformation together.

Think of Steve Jobs. His enthusiasm, energy, and drive were contagious. He “infected” people with his energy and vision, creating excitement and purpose. He built Apple, one of the world’s most admired organizations. With Apple’s many innovations, Steve Jobs changed the world. Similarly, some leaders are able to create excitement and enthusiasm, thus galvanizing change. They are able to address the emotions of the members of their organizations, and get them to act and to build great organizations. This happens when a company leader galvanizes an organization to change and improve by painting a thrilling and exciting picture of the future, or when a political leader addresses a nation’s anger and frustrations and promises a better future in order to win an election and change a nation for the better.

Inspirational leadership addresses people’s inner motivators, values, and emotions. It is a key ingredient in building great organizations, and it is the most effective leadership approach when organizations need to massively change and improve. Being inspired creates the energy, the enthusiasm, the commitment, and the persistence people need to transform themselves and their organizations.

However, while executives often talk about and idealize inspirational leadership, actually putting it into action as an approach is rare. Reviews of the usage frequency of all approaches to leading people show that leaders use inspirational leadership methods on only 2 percent of all occasions. Given today’s dynamic environment – with ever-changing customer demands, new regulations, and continuous technological innovation – and the high rate at which companies fail to adapt, change, and survive, it is striking that leaders use inspiration so rarely. Why is that?

The short answer: because it is hard. Inspiring people and organizations takes competence, and, for some leaders, confidence.

However, competence and confidence can be built. While some leaders may be better at inspiring than others, the ability to inspire and motivate others isn’t an innate trait. The ability to inspire others is grounded in a set of conscious, intentional, and learnable behaviors. It can be built with deliberate practice.1 You can become a better inspirational leader.

The objective of this short book is to increase your competence and confidence in inspiring others. It is designed to build your ability to inspire and mobilize others – individual people, teams, or entire organizations.

Learning the four essential concepts in this book will give you a “toolbox” for applying inspirational leadership:

1. What inspirational leadership is —Inspirational leadership is a process of social influence in which you enlist the support of individuals, teams, and organizations to achieve a common goal.2 Looking at various influencing strategies, you will learn what inspired leadership is, how to use it, and when it works. As neuroscience shows, inspirational leadership builds on the processes our brain uses to learn and change.

2. How to inspire others —You will learn how to identify people’s emotions and values, and how to address these values and emotions to inspire them to act.

3. When to use inspirational leadership —Inspirational approaches don’t work with everyone. Learn which people will respond and what strategies to use to get other people – those who are less susceptible to inspirational appeals – to commit to action and change. You’ll learn when inspirational leadership is – and is not – the best strategy.

4. How to implement inspirational leadership at scale —You can wield inspirational approaches to influence large groups of people and entire organizations – the key is knowing when and how to apply this toolbox for maximum effectiveness.

Before we start, let me make three comments.

First, some people react negatively to the concept of influencing others through inspiration or any other approach. They sometimes perceive such approaches as acts of manipulation. Instead, think of inspiring and other social influencing techniques as instruments – neither good nor bad. A leader can use them to misinform and manipulate others or to get them to do something that may be in the leader’s interest but not in the interest of those being led. A leader can, however, also use inspiration or other influencing techniques with integrity, creating action and momentum toward a common goal.

Second, in Chapter 10 we discuss a model called What Are People Like? (WAPL), a simple framework for “profiling” others and understanding their cognitive and emotional setup. This instrument lays out a few questions that can help you diagnose what’s going on with someone else. The WAPL model is helpful in understanding the behavioral inclinations of specific individuals, and the forms of influencing that might do the best job of reaching them. However, this book does not pretend to present a comprehensive view of human behavior. Human beings are incredibly complex, and every individual is unique. The genetic makeup and life experiences that have shaped a person are unique to that person. It is, therefore, impossible to “read” an individual’s motivations, behaviors, or beliefs accurately. However, it is possible in a short time frame to develop an educated and informed hypothesis about someone else’s behavioral patterns or tendencies, and that’s the purpose of the model we discuss.

Third, to make the concept of inspirational leadership real and practical, the book illustrates it through the story of a leader of an international health-care corporation called Influ. I would like to emphasize that the story is pure fiction. Any resemblance to any existing persons, firms, or events is purely coincidental.

Now, let’s meet the main character in our story, James Robinson, the CEO of London-based Influ, a major, international health-care corporation.

As you are, he is about to take a journey.